Author Wes Locher has teamed up with Stratics for a giveaway of his new book Braving Britannia. This book explores the history and impact of Ultima Online and includes interviews from current and past dev team members as well as many UO and Stratics community members. Click here for more details!

THE PEEKAY CLICHÉ

(*curtain rises*)
(*Two people stand and talk near the bank about their adventures, about how things are going for them*)

"PK's suck, I dont want to die to PK's."
"Don't leave town."
"Town Sucks, I want to be a merchant and mine the rocks and chop the trees."
"Then learn how to fight, defend yourself."
"I don't want to learn to fight, I dont want to have to defend myself."
"Tough , Newb."
"Why should I have to fight? Why should someone else be able to affect how I play the game?"

(*In the background a merchant is seen walking just outside of the guard zone, tentatively. When he is satisfied the coast is clear, he steps forward. 5 people come out of hiding, pelting him with arrows. He drops almost instantly. His belongings remain on his warm body for less than 15 seconds.*)

ACT ONE: SCENE TWO:

(*The scene is changed, a designer peers into a terminal screen, reading design documents. He has just spent some serious time playing his own game, and attempted to enter a dungeon. Much to his amazement, the dungeons were not the fun adventure zones they were intended to be. Instead they were certain death and loss of wealth at the hands of other players. A colleague comes up behind him.*)

"What's up Ralph?"
"Well, Tom, I was just in the game, and I couldn't have any fun in a dungeon. No matter which dungeon I went to, I was just killed and looted by other players."
"Well, we wanted that kind of danger, right?"
"Right, but, not to this degree."
"Well, that seems like a rather subjective way of looking at it. I mean, one man's danger is another man's thrill right?"
"Right again. But I can't help but think that this isn't what people are paying for."
"Remember, nothing is secure in this game. Dungeons aren't secure, buildings arent secure. It's all insecure, and the players should know that."
"Right again."

(*In the background, a lone support phone operator quits their job in tears.*)

ACT ONE: SCENE THREE:

(*A group of people gathers around inside an empty building, equipped to the max. They are all speaking to each other in a strange garbled tongue*)

"KAL VAS FLAM"
"CORP POR"
"haha! newbie!"
"POR ORT GRAV"
"AN EX POR"
(*The scene is one of lots of running around, there is confusion everywhere. There are no monsters in this dungeon, only people waiting for spawn*)
"mine!"
"gimme loot"

(*after about 10 or 20 minutes of this, the group calms down, the supply of victims diminishes in the dungeon, as word has gone out that the dungeon has PK's in it. The men recall or gate out of the dungeon.*)

(*The dungeon scene recovers slowly. One random person goes in, and safely comes out. in a few minutes people feel safe again, and return to trying to hunt down monsters. 15 Minutes later, yet another group of armed men gate in, and lay waste.*)

ACT ONE: SCENE FOUR:

(*Two groups of people stand around each other. The air is tense with confrontation. The silence is broken when one leader calls out to the other...*)

"KNAVE! You shall not have this land that our guild has rightfully claimed!"
"FOOL! You are outnumbered, and we are past the point of compromise!"

(*the two groups engage freely in tactical warfare on this battlefield. Each one pushing and pleading with the game mechanics to give them an edge in this confrontation. Many soldiers on each side fall. In the end you see a gory battlefield full of dead decaying bodies and rusting equipment.*)

(*PULL BACK, OUT OF THE GAME. We now see one of the people involved in this event as he is about to log off.*)

"Goddamn that was the most fun I've ever had. Sex with two women could not compare."

ACT TWO: SCENE ONE:

(*The game is down, a common occurence in this era. All the players are sitting on the internet with nothing to do. Idle hands bring them to the only place their fingers do the bullshitting.... the message boards.*)

[*]PK's suck, I hate PK's! They ruin the game! {NT}
[*] you newb! -NT
[*]Real intelligent post here&lt;/UL&gt;
[*]I AGREE! {NoText}
[*]bl0w me }NT}
[*]WITHOUT PK'S THIS GAME WOULDN'T BE FUN!! {TEXT}
[*]It's just a part of the game, adapt and live. It is only a game -text
[*]stupid rolplayah! Without PK'ing, there would be no danger! NT
[*]Oh ya? What about monsters?
[*]You are gay
[*]Monsters suck, the AI blows and they never spawn. This game is about killing each other.
[*]SHUT UP.
[*]Well, killing randomly is bad, but the PVP in this game rocks.
[*]Dungeons were never designed to be safe - Red Named Person
[*]BB - PLEASE GET RID OF THE PKS! k thx
[*]That's BS, I should be able to be safe from other players.

(*Without moderation, Fuzzling in this environment becomes a non-option. Eventually the servers come back up, and these people resume their activities, sans random homosexual references and authoritative tense*)

ACT THREE: SCENE ONE:

(*We jump a year into the future now. Lots of changes have come down the pipe. The game is not the same. You see the bank in the foreground, where two different people are talking about their adventures. *)

"PK's suck, I dont want to die to PK's."
"Don't leave town."
"Town Sucks, I want to be a merchant and mine the rocks and chop the trees."
"Then learn how to fight, defend yourself."
"I don't want to learn to fight, I dont want to have to defend myself."
"Tough , Newb."
"Why should I have to fight? Why should someone else be able to affect how I play the game?"

(*There are virtually no merchants, even in town. In the background a merchant is seen walking just outside of the guard zone, tentatively. When he is satisfied the coast is clear, he steps forward. 15 people come out of hiding, pelting him with arrows. He drops almost instantly. His belongings remain on his warm body for less than 5 seconds.*)

ACT THREE: SCENE TWO:

(*A meeting at the company is over. The new designer is talking to the chief accountant.*)

"What's up John?"
"Oh, our customer number is way down. And our new customers are staying for a much shorter period of time. We can't explain it just yet."
"Really? Well what did those canceled accounts give as an explanation?"
"Oh, they said something about, getting killed all the time."
"Odd, this game was supposed to let players kill each other, hmmm."
"Maybe we should do something, to keep our customers."
"Well, We could make it harder to kill people."
"Sounds good."

(*Weeks later, melee weapon damage is halved.*)

ACT THREE: SCENE THREE:

(*A huge number of armed men, some somewhat disgruntled, are gathering for another gate to a dungeon. Their language grows more coarse and profanity laced the longer they remain in limbo waiting for the gate. Presently, two of the men reach the boiling point, and attack each other over "pixels" in a "backpack". Their guild stretches far and wide. They have more resources than even the game administrators ever dreamed of having, buildings lined up side by side so close that if a new player happens to walk by, escape becomes difficult to impossible.*)

(*A gate opens, and the men vanish through it. An old story plays itself out once again in a dungeon near you. No, this isn't disneyland, nor was it intended to be. On the other hand, noone pays to go to an amusement park so that other amusement park patrons can tell them what rides they can go on without having to defend themeselves and their property.*)

ACT FOUR: SCENE ONE:

(*Much has changed. A notoriety system was implemented. Stat loss now harms those who kill randomly.

(*We see two men by the bank, discussing their adventures. *)

"Stat loss sucks, I dont want to lose stats and skills."
"Don't kill randomly."
"That Sucks, Sometimes people just deserve it."
"Then learn how to be a merchant, find something else fun about the game."
"I don't want to be a gay merchant, I dont want to have to chop wood."
"Tough ."
"Why can't I kill? Why should the game company be able to affect how I play the game?"

(*In the background, we see a red player get too close to the guard zone. 20 blue "PvP'ers" rush towards him and slaughter him. His goods are looted in 2 seconds, and the blue players laugh at his 'stat loss' *)

ACT FOUR: SCENE TWO:

(* A gentleman from a big Corporation known as EEAY is in the offices today. He is concentrating on what matters to him most... the numbers. *)

"What did you guys pull in last week?"
"Oh, our subscriber base is increasing almost exponentially. We've totally reversed that one errant trend a while back."
"Really? What did you do?"
"We made it REALLY hard to kill other players in the game."
"Huh, and they said violence makes good games, weird."
"Yes, yes, our gross income is way up, and looks to continue as this genre expands."
"It just goes to show, welching on design goals really does pay off."

(*The men enjoy a hearty laugh.*)

ACT FOUR: SCENE THREE:

(*The once proud guild has been reduced to 5 members. They are laughed at, their characters are totally , and any time they leave they are hunted by blues. They are seen macroing off their murders.*)

(*This continues until a person in a red robe appears, asks for a response, and gets nothing. All the people who were caught macroing were disconnected, and their accounts marked for possible banishment.*)

ACT FOUR: SCENE FOUR:

(*We see the same old group of men, gathered around a field, preparing for battle.*)

"SUBMIT!! and live!"
"NEVER! DEATH FIRST!"

(*The battle begins, and as soldiers fall, those that live slowly turn red. All their names eventually become red. Much to their surprise, when some of the red players fall, they suffer stat loss, and are unable to be resurrected by normal shrines and healers. This becomes disconcerting, considering the battle took place "in-character". Some of the players quit the game because their characters took too much damage to repair. *)

ACT FIVE: SCENE ONE:

(*The game is down. Everyone is on the message boards ranting away.*)

[*]Stat Loss's sucks ass, I hate stat loss! It has ruined the game! NT
[*]Bring back pre-pasting biotch!! -NT
[*]moron. nt&lt;/UL&gt;
[*]I AGREE! {NoText}
[*]bl0w me }NT}
[*]WITHOUT STAT LOSS THIS GAME WOULD BE ANARCHY!! {TEXT}
[*]It's just a part of the game, adapt and live. It is only a game -text
[*]stupid pk! Without stat loss, there would be no law and order! NT
[*]Oh ya? What about guards?
[*]You are gay
[*]Town sucks, You can't do anything fun in town. This game is about roleplaying with each other.
[*]SHUT UP.
[*]Well, killing randomly is bad, but organized PVP in this game rocks.
[*]We never intended for you to kill randomly - Red Named Person
[*]BB - PLEASE BRING BACK PRE-CASTING!! k thx.
[*]That's BS, I should be able to kill other players.

ACT SIX: SCENE ONE: (*FINAL SCENE*)

(*In the depths of EEAY's financial analysis room, a man reviews documentation for a review meeting. He finishes his report with a loose equation and graph representing the situation to present to his superior. The bottom line is good, the project to put up a game world has paid off, and the stockholders should be pleased. The negative press on the project has stopped or fallen into obscurity.*)

(* The report lands on the table in front of the corporate executive. He's puzzled*)

"So, even though people don't like this game, they still play?"
"Yes, apparently so."
"You mean, with all the things they don't like about it, or profess to, we're still turning a huge profit."
"It's all right there sir."
"We need to get our other subsidiaries to adopt whatever model they used. Then this business wouldn't be so risky."
"It's hard to disagree."
"Ya, and even harder to imagine that games could ever be so addictive as to keep people paying $10 a month for a game they don't like."

THIS IS FICTION, AND IN NO WAY MEANT TO REPRESENT ACTUAL EVENTS. ANY SIMILARITIES TO REAL PEOPLE, PLACES OR EVENTS, PAST OR PRESENT IS PURELY A RESULT OF A REPRESSED MEMORY IN MY MIND, AND NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT FACT.

Uh... what others do (such as PK and what not) Should directly affect how others play the game... thats what seperates the MMORPG genre from the single player games etc, the the whole point of UO, and some people don't get that, everything anyone does should affect every other player, whether they like it or not... if they just like Ultima and dont like having a flowing realisitc world then they should play UI-IX...

Greif players don't even realize that they are the ones who cause the changes they hate to UO.

The post Rainman made he originally made in a thread on Lum's... here's another from the same thread...

<font color=blue>From: The Hanged Man

You are not your avatar. Your avatar is a character whose life is to entertain you. Which is the heart of the problem with PKing. Entertain me and everyone else.

Player Justice is a hollow joke, its also the Killing Joke.

You see there are many forms of entertainment. There is fun with others but also fun at the expense of others. Certainly there are PKs and Antis who want to have fun while their target has fun as well. This means that if the target is not having fun they would stop and leave the player alone. This is called self discipline , a term you won't see very often on Battle Vortex. If the PKs or Antis want fun but at the expense of others then the litmus test is that they refuse to leave others alone that are not enjoying themselves.

In thousands of hours of playing UO on various shards since Day 5 of UO I have seen PKs or antis lay off people not having fun twice. Yes, twice . I saw the Shadowclan Orcs stop roleplaying on SP and leave someone alone and walk away about a month ago. I saw someone give their victim back their stuff and apologize about a year or so ago. These incidents stick in my mind because they are rarities. Pks or antis who want to enjoy UO and want their opponents to enjoy UO as well. For these memories I have a hundred more of obnoxious obscenity spewing fools standing outside city gates being asses.Its the S O S , find a victim, abuse them , let someone else deal with the mess run off for more self gratification.

As an evil roleplayer taking pride in his craft one of the most important parts was making sure the good guy enjoyed dealing with you in roleplaying. The successful roleplay encounter was not the good guy winning or bad guy winning. It was creating an event that people would remember.

Self Control was important because your goal was fun not Roxxoring. The problem with 90 percent of the "UO Freedom" cult is they don't give a rats ass about others. If they have their fun and in the process screw up the shard for 100 other players then so what. Self gratification with no conscience is the norm not the exception. Feel free to go to Test Factions to see this. Ask the players there how they are planning to make UO enjoyable for others. That is if they can type complete sentences.

Stat Loss is merely repayment in kind. Its not a great thing because you are punishing a group of people who ruin other people's fun by ruining their character. So now you have unhappy victims, unhappy PKs, and greedy antis usually occupying a slot on a PK's account.

What did your killing do to make UO fun? Nothing. What did Stat Loss do to make UO fun? Nothing . So the circle of unhappiness is now complete. everyone else and entertain me. Enjoy the little world you helped create. Yeah, people are broken but everyone is guilty in this little drama . UO Players want Trammel and PKS. PKs want victims and other players fun. Antis want PKs and other players fun. Its a sick sad little circle we have .</font color=blue>

So you can either be a respected player and enhance other people's enjoyment or you can be a grief player, be hated, and keep losing freedoms and "tactics". The option is yours.

<font color=purple>Don't support duping, boycott player to player trading till duping is fixed!</font color=purple> of LS [GM Mad Scientist; NMA]

Ok so they put on stat loss because people pk'd too much... so your saying we could not have statloss if we didn't pk as much? That doesn't make sense... defeats its own purpose... OSI wouldn't have to change the game from Real to Carebear if all the single player game addicts would've just stayed and played alone, because they ruined the whole point of UO. No Im not saying the point of UO was PvP, or PK, or any form of combat. But they didn't allow for other players to have an affect on their alternate personality, I didn't buy UO when it was released and pull out my newbie sword and start PKing, I was Pk'd like there was no tommorrow like every other person, but damn I had fun! I learned to strip down on what I took hunting, tactics of escape, and eventually to fight back... all this because it was do or die, and that was the best time I had in UO.

Interaction does not always mean confrontation. A person at the bank selling items or the smiths at the smithy are interacting as much as KeWLi0 and his gang are by killing people. The difference is that the people who are not always killing each other are just as legitimate players as those killing each other.

As much as you say "OSI wouldn't have to change the game from Real to Carebear if all the single player game addicts would've just stayed and played alone", other people say that PvP in UO would not have been ruined if not for the God-Mode using twich/Quake/Doom gamers who sought to turn UO into a non-3d Quake frag-fest.

<font color=purple>Don't support duping, boycott player to player trading till duping is fixed!</font color=purple> of LS [GM Mad Scientist; NMA]

Oh sorry I forgot they also don't pay a monthly fee... cause they don't do what you do and bake bread they must be psychos...

Not all PKs are k3wL d00ds you know.

And much of the group attacks and luring out to dungeons that PKs had to do is becase of the way UO was setup, as much of a Roleplayer as someone may be, I would bet anything if a Murderer attacked them suddenly that 'Ranger of the Woods' pops out his reclal scroll and instantly zips away... not much choice but to gank.

Sure, in any multiplayer world, what others do should affect you. That's what participating in this kind of game is supposed to be about.

THAT WAS ACTUALLY MY POINT.
If you read the whole thing, you see that PK's affected people so much, that they ended up affecting themselves. You'll see that roleplayers were so quiet, that they eventually got ignored. You'll see that "newbie whiners" were so loud, that the net effect of their whining killed off free PvP, which is what they'll all be wishing they had when they become bored with monsters.

Read it again, and realize that, in fact, our actions in this game do affect everyone, only too well. So well, in fact, that the game has come full circle. It didn't come around this way because it's a closed system, it didn't come around this way because stupid people decided to "break" the game. It came around this way because the company trying to make money off this game started losing money from people leaving the game, and they reacted.

The lesson?

You want victims? Fine! Just make sure your victims are still having fun in the game, and they wont leave, and OSI has no reason to change PvP.

You want totally lawless PvP? GREAT! Just make sure that whoever you kill doesn't go off feeling screwed to the point of quitting the game, and then EA has no reason to worry about the bottom line.

Rainman, nicely written, thanks for the good read, although I don't agree with all of it.
AND to the PKr's, my response from several days ago to another PKfan: The game offers opportunities for a wide variety of playstyles. You can have Barneyland play, or you can have Cuththroat Island play--or somewhere in between.
The thing is, BOTH EXTREMES are AVAILABLE, and LOTS IN BETWEEN.
Questions: Are you lacking partners to play your particular style, or are you lacking victims to submit to your style? Would you like OSI to revert the game to when you had lots of players available as Unwilling victims? Was it more fun then? Is it no fair that players are afforded the opportunity to explore the 95% of the game that does not involved being victimized by other players? Is there something inherently wrong or unfair about that?
MY addition to this, today: You know, I don't get the part where folks say PKing is dead--in my experience, if you want it, it's available in the plenty. One simply needs to find agreeable players, or the occasional unlucky traveler.

In a realistic world, you can't run around and kill everyone without suffering consequences. If they brought back free killing, it would be as horrible as it was long ago, everyone PK'd and you died at least once a day. If you want to murder and make the game hard on other players, then that is fine, but you should suffer a form of punishment instead of town banishment, big deal, get your blue guy to run to town for you.

I dont pk. If I ever got into that aspect of the game. I would PK some one. Take what I need/ want, not everything. Res or lead the victum to a healer. Take him back to the rest of his stuff and bolt outta there before he can stab me in the back.

If I nail a miner. I would take his half his ingots. Res or lead him to a healer. Take him back to the rest of his stuff. Would I kill his pack horse? NO. Would I stand over his corpse and Degrade him KNOWING that he was only a miner? NO.

It boils down to one thing. Consideration. If UO had more of that it would be a better place.

I was playing on test faction and got killed on a building with no way down. The mage in the other faction gated me down. I respect that kinda stuff. He coulda been a **** and left me up there but no. He beat me, He smiled, and he gated me. I hold more repect for that guy than those 5 Twinks who would gank me in a dungeon, Kill my horse, and laugh at me {along with multible profanities spewing forth from there maggot infested mouth} for not being able to kill all five of them.

Be Considerate. 'Nough said.

The opinions of the poster are biased opinions and do not neccesarily reflect, in part or in whole, the actual opinions of the poster {although some may indeed}.

I am a pretty new player, and I live in trammel. I stay there because I feel that if you allow lawlessness and evil to occur in the game (thru uncontrolled PK, stealing and the rest of "open playing") then all you have done is create a medium that charges 9.95 a month and purifies the good out of the game until all the is left is exploiters, jerks and predators. Evil acts should never go unpunished. Player justice? Yes, in a very few cases. Look at real life. The problem is that at least in real life, we are controlled to some extent and there is something to lose by being caught and executed. You want to make the game more like real life? Then lets go all the way. Let's be sure to jail players for crimes when caught, and in a few cases, lets eliminate them FOREVER thru capital punishemtn. You a murderer? Get caught and then go to the chair, you can never play again, your character was executed.
People don't want real life. Even the whiners that are griping on how controlled PK is now. What they really want is the right to screw others around, to steal from innocents, to expoit someone who is ignorant simply because they are new.
And I thought that thru the guild system, you COULD kill each other, and it was totally consensual. That is the best kind of PKing. When both parties agree that it's what they want to do.

So go to felucca, slug it out, and leave me the heck alone. When I feel I want to risk being murdered etc, I will go to fel, and join a guild at war.

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

Why hit a man when he's down? It's much easier to kick him.
Before you criticize anyone, you should run a mile in their shoes. That way, if they try to fight you, you'll be a mile away AND have their shoes!

If you drop your keys into a river of molten lava, then let them go, because they're gone dude. BUT....if you play on Europa, then put your valorite plate on the ground, and go diving after them....because you CAN survive if you cast protection.

I've seen a lot of posts about "The whiners created Trammel" lately, and thought I'd resurrect this REALLY old thread, found way back on the last page of U. Hall. Simple look at cause and effect for the griefers out there that seem to have forgotten why they caused Trammel to be a necessity...

dispite your claim to the contrary that sounded so much like UO history /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif I do remember the days when a dungeon would have 20-30 blues doing PvM and a red guild of 5 or so players would totally clean the dungeon out in a minute flat.

WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!! You took up that much room to defend pking, when there is no defense! Pker's are just griefers who ruin the game for others,
might be fun for you, but you have no consideration for other ppl and their gameplay needs! Your nothing more than animals waiting in packs in the shadows for some lone prey to come by so you can all jump him and kill him! Really sounds fun to me! Sounds pretty sick to me! I think you all need help in real life, your real life aggressions are funneling over to game play, and the ppl on this game are not your whipping posts to relieve your real life aggressions! GET HELP!!!

If your not part of the cure - Your part of the problem /php-bin/shared/images/icons/tongue.gif

Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet. Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years. We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players.